Echoes
by PunkPinkPower
Summary: The echoes of being a ranger stay with you long after the power is gone.


_AN: I have been toying with the idea of ranger colors for a while now, and this is the end result. I really like it on a whole. I think also that the kids who appear (or are mentioned as the case may be) are pretty much my cannon version of the NS children. And I really like all the rangers as parents. The pairings in this are also my cannon, save for probably the whole Skyla/Shane/Jade thing. I don't really like Jade. But I couldn't, in good conscience, bring Skyla back without a lengthy explanation (which I will do one of these days) and having her dead made this better anyway. Enjoy, and leave a review for the starving author, pretty please! _

**Echoes**

It couldn't be a good sign that their children associated them with their colors. He hadn't thought anything about Skylar constantly drawing him in a red shirt at first, at least not until he started changing Jade's color from pink to orange to green and back. The fact that his son thought his mother could be any color she wanted but that his father had to remain red just had to be relevant.

He hadn't really thought about it until Cam and Hunter's son had started drawing abstract pictures that just happened to contain their ranger colors. Hunter had asked him what the picture was of, and Mani had just blinked at him.

"You don't know?" He asked skeptically, shooting a look at Hunter that was a mirror image of his expression.

When Hunter shook his head, Mani had sighed dramatically and began pointing to colors. "That's you, and that's dad, and that's Aunt Marah and Uncle Dustin, and that's Aunt Tori, and this one is Uncle Blake and this one is Uncle Shane."

Upon his words, the small family gathering had fallen silent.

It seemed that the color coding of their ranger days reverberated even now.

"I don't even wear red all the time anymore!" Shane had argued as he and Tori had done the dishes later.

"But everything important in your life is red, Shane. It always has been." Tori told him. "Blake and I are the same way. Between the two of us, it's a miracle the entire house isn't blue. Even Matthew likes his fathers color! If it weren't for Lori insisting upon having a purple bedroom 'like Aunt Marah'" Tori laughed as she mimicked her daughter, "there wouldn't be a shred of color anywhere."

"And even purple is a kind of blue." Shane agreed, drying a plate Tori handed him and stacking it on the side table.

"I know! And we're all like that. Look where we are!" Tori gestured around Cam's and Hunter's kitchen, and if he thought about it their house was pretty color coded too.

He was the only one who had married outside the rangers. And technically, he and Jade weren't married. They lived together, and they raised Skylar together, but there hadn't been a ceremony and they didn't wear rings. No one had really questioned it, and while his parents constantly pressured for a wedding, both Shane and Jade didn't see the need for it now.

And since Jade had never known about the rangers, the color coding was lost on her. And somehow, Tori was right. There was a surprising amount of red in their house. Jade must have picked up on his color somehow, after living with him for nearly 8 years, because she hadn't made a fuss over the red motif since they moved in together. And if Shane thought about it, he liked Jade in red more than any other color.

"Doesn't it make you feel better?" Tori wondered quietly. "Wearing your color?"

Shane grinned over at her, reaching out to poke her shoulder. "Are we getting nostalgic for our crime fighting days?"

Tori rolled her eyes happily. "No! I just mean… I can wear other colors now without feeling like I'm not myself but… I feel best when I wear blue."

It was a sentiment shared by all on the team, and even those who hadn't technically been on the team, like Marah and Leanne. Marah preferred purple, always had.

"It's pink for me," Leanne told him when he asked her later. "Hunter teases me all the time. Say's I should have been the pink ranger." She shook her head fondly, but Shane had to grin at the thought.

"Maybe it's not just the rangers then." Shane decided, walking the grounds of the academy with her. "Maybe it has to do more with our elements."

"I don't know. I see the students wearing all the colors, no matter the element." Leanne paused, reaching up to brush some of her red hair out of her face. "I think I just started spending so much time with all of you that I picked up on the color awareness. Same for Marah and Jade, I'm sure. The whole lot of you ex-rangers are color obsessed. I think I chose pink because it was the only color that didn't insinuate anything."

"Insinuate anything?" Shane repeated, and Leanne sniggered.

"Remember back when the academies were first freed?" Her tone was lighter, teasing now. Shane raised an eyebrow. "I used to wear red all the time, cause I was crimson thunder like Hunter. I spent so much time here at the wind academy, and so much time with all of you… well, people thought you and I were dating."

Shane's mouth fell open, and Leanne laughed.

"I'm telling you, color obsessed. And it rubs off on everyone around you."

Leanne appeared to be right. Shane went through the photos of everyone hanging in his own house and as hard as he looked, he couldn't find a single picture where any of them was wearing a color not their own.

He remembered Dustin telling him once that rangers who dated each other often shared colors. That explained Cam's favorite green shirt with the crimson sleeves, and it explained why Marah wore yellow almost as much as purple. It might also explain Jade's acceptance of his color coding ways, even though she had no idea what they were from.

The red calmed him. It made him feel connected to the world in a different way, and he liked that. It was soothing.

"Daddy?" Skylar asked him one night while Shane was tucking him in. "Why doesn't mommy have a color?"

Shane froze halfway through picking up Sky's favorite stuffed animal on the shelf and turned, staring at his son. "What?"

"Everybody has a color but mommy." Skylar told him matter-of-factly. "How come she doesn't?"

Shane paused long enough to consider this, grabbed the hawk animal off the shelf and handed it to his son. "Why do you think everyone has a color?"

Skylar grabbed the animal and hugged it to himself happily. "You glow, silly."

Shane blinked at him. "I glow?"

"You all do. Tori, Blake, Dustin, Cam, and Hunter. Everybody glows." Sky yawned, and Shane thought about just letting it slide as a childhood fantasy.

"Do Marah and Leanne glow?" but curiosity often killed the cat.

Skylar seemed to think about this. "Sometimes. Marah glows when she's really happy. And Leanne only glows when she's practicing her you-know-what."

Shane smirked slightly. Skylar couldn't be kept from the academies all the time, not when all of his friends had started the youth programs, so you-know-what had become their code to keep Jade from questioning their son being a ninja.

"Momma never glows." Skylar seemed sad, and Shane didn't know how to console him. "How come?"

He didn't have an answer for the little boy. If there was one thing parenthood had taught him, it was that he more often than not didn't have the answers. It was a humbling experience.

That was the night he told Jade about the rangers. Out of the blue, like a shot in the dark. He finished tucking Sky in with promises to ask Sensei and find out why mommy didn't glow, and he went to the kitchen where Jade was doing dishes. Standing in the doorway, without any apprehension, he waited until she looked at him.

"I was a power ranger." Simple as that.

Jade just stared at him for several long moments. Finally she shrugged. "That explains a few things."

Shane watched as she turned back to the dishes without a second thought, and that was it. Secret out, no big deal. He didn't know what he'd expected, but he didn't suppose he should be surprised. He didn't know why he thought it was such a powerful secret to carry.

Jade called Marah the next day, and the two of them talked about the rangers for a considerable amount of time. Why Jade thought Marah would be more knowledgeable on that subject than himself he had no clue.

Asking Sensei about the color coding proved to be useful.

"Cameron used to experience the same phenomenon as a young child." Sensei told him. "He told me that particular people he would watch train glowed. I assumed it had something to do with the concentration of elemental energy a person has when working with it, and perhaps the fact that an innocent eye is needed to see such a thing."

Shane nodded. "So kids can see the elements better than we can."

"It is why I took Hunter and Marah's advise to start a youth program so seriously. The students learning to use their elements while they can still see them so clearly may provide a great advantage for them." Sensei agreed.

"And the daycare for the teachers doesn't hurt either." Shane teased, but there was a twinkle in Sensei's eye that said he agreed. "Sky said we glowed all the time. I had to ask him about Marah and Leanne."

"Did he specify the colors?" Sensei wondered, placing his hands together in an eerily familiar way on the desk.

"I can guess." Shane told him, and Sensei nodded.

"One can only assume that this is the residual effect of the power you and the others once held. The power enhanced your control of the elements, and therefore the elemental affinity inside of all of you. It seems only fitting that there would be some trace of the power that remains with you."

It was a difficult thing to explain to Skylar, and he didn't totally understand. It was hard to tell him that his mother didn't glow because she wasn't like them, she wasn't a ninja. He didn't get it.

He did get that he saw the glow because he was a kid. "So one day you'll stop glowing?" Sky's eyes widened in fear. "When will that happen?"

Shane frowned, uncomfortable. "It's not that we'll stop glowing. It's just that you won't be able to see it anymore. You'll grow up, and the glow will go away."

Sky frowned, reminding Shane of his own face. "Well, then I just won't grow up."

Shane hoped he never would.

Nothing had changed in his relationship with Jade since she found out about his ranger days, and now they could talk freely about it at group gatherings. He didn't know why he hadn't told her before.

And yet he did. Keeping Jade separate from all that made their life seem normal, even when it wasn't. It also kept her from finding out the true reason he had insisted on naming their son after a woman he'd only known for a few hours.

But the truth was that he had known more about Skyla than anyone he'd ever met. A part of her was with him, inside of him. She may have transferred her powers to Shane's morpher, but her life had been transferred to him, and with it came all of her memories. He knew who she was, where she had come from, and what had brought them together. He knew her hopes, her aspirations, her dreams, and he forever admired her dedication to a cause that was bigger than either of them.

Maybe it was some kind of twisted devotion to Skyla that had made him want to carry on her family namesake. Perhaps it was her speaking to him from the afterlife she resided in. Or perhaps it was simply her influence on his personality that made him give her a legacy. Skylar would always be more Skyla's son than his own.

He hoped one day to tell Skylar of the brave, kind, and beautiful woman who had given him his name. Skyla deserved to be remembered, in whatever way she could be. She had given him a gift greater than any of this world; her life.

He loved Jade, loved her as much as he was capable of loving anyone. But Skyla was a part of who he was, and he couldn't ask her to understand that.

His friends kept their mouths blissfully shut, as they always had. They seemed to recognize the need to keep Skylar's namesake a secret. The only one who had ever commented had been Dustin, and only on the day Skylar was born.

"It's a good name for a boy." He'd said, and that had been the end of it.

The strangest part of being a ranger remained all that went unspoken between him and the members of his team. They were bonded, united in a cause, and they knew him better than anyone without even trying. He didn't have to tell them how much he loved and appreciated them because they knew, but he did anyway.

When he told them about the glowing scenario, they all had something to add to the theory.

"That's going to suck one day though, won't it?" Blake asked the group at large. "I mean, one day we just stop glowing to them, and poof, they're grown up. Gonna be scary."

"Traumatizing." Marah agreed, glancing over at the kids playing in the sprinklers.

"Liat mentioned something about it to me, once." Cam spoke up suddenly, and Hunter pulled away to look at him with a scandalized expression.

"When?" He demanded immediately, and a few of them sniggered.

"When we went to adopt her. She told me about a year later that we glowed like angels, and she thought her mother and father had sent us to take care of them." Cam spoke quietly, quickly, sharing a private memory with them easier than he once had.

"Guess that glow's good for something, then." Hunter agreed, reaching over and wrapping a comforting arm around Cam's shoulder.

"It is strange though." Leanne argued across from them. "I grew up on a ninja academy, and I never saw anyone glowing."

"Me neither." Hunter agreed, and suddenly Blake looked uncomfortable.

He looked like he was going to say something, but couldn't. Shane caught on and decided to spare him.

"Sensei said it had to do with a child's innocence." He reminded, and Leanne frowned before smiling sadly.

"Guess watching a dark ninja take your mom down kinda ruins that, huh?" She managed to make her voice sound light, airy, but Shane wished he could hug her all the same.

Marah cleared her throat, more than ready to change the subject. "I wonder if the kids see each other glow?"

"And I wonder what colors they glow." Jade added from his side with a grin. She hadn't felt like contributing to the conversation until now, and her presence seemed to startle some of them. "I wonder how much color obsession they inherited from their parents."

The table was silent, and several nervous looks were exchanged.

Jade caught it immediately. "I was kidding!"

The table burst into giggles, and suddenly there was an open invitation to discuss what elemental affinities and rangers colors their children might hold.

"Lori's favorite color is purple, and I think we all know whose fault that is." Tori said first, and Marah giggled.

"Purple isn't an element!" Marah argued happily. "I think Lori's an Air."

Shane guffawed. "No way. Sweet little Lori?"

"Sweet little Lori is totally an Air." Blake agreed gravely. "I can so see it."

"Look at her right now." Cam advised, nodding over towards the kids playing. Lori was in the process of organizing a game of freeze tag. "She's a natural leader. The other kids listen to her because she's confident and friendly, but she stubborn like her mother too."

Tori reached over to swat Cam, and they all laughed.

"You really think Lori's a red?" Tori asked as she watched her daughter play, and there were mutual sounds of agreement around the table. "What does that make Sky then?"

Everyone seemed to consider Shane's son, who had formed an alliance with Liat and the two of them were running around keeping the game from progressing.

"I don't think he's an air ninja." Shane said at last, and he saw Jade consider him with forced casualty. "But he sure does like red."

"He also likes breaking the rules." Dustin agreed, seeing where Shane was going.

"And he never likes hearing the word no." Leanne chirped, giving Hunter a sly grin.

"I think I know where this is going." Hunter told them dejectedly. "And you can all just shut your mouths."

"Okay, yeah, Skylar is Crimson, then." Blake agreed immediately. "But Matty is totally Navy."

"I'll agree with that." Tori added in a much abused tone. "He's exactly like his father."

"Wait a minute, if Sky is Crimson what are my kids? Chopped liver?" Hunter demanded, and everyone laughed.

"Liat?" Cam's voice said he already knew the answer, but wanted confirmation all the same.

"Samurai." Leanne didn't seem to hear it, looking at Cam smugly. "No doubt about it."

"Funny thing is, Mani's favorite color is green." Hunter added. And they all turned to consider the younger boy.

"I think Mani's a water affinity." Tori said curiously. "He's sensitive in a way water affinities usually are, and intuitive enough to see what other people need and help them figure it out."

Hunter scoffed. "Why does my son get the girl element?" He teased, and both Tori and Leanne turned to him with dangerously amused looks.

"Girl element?" Tori echoed, and Hunter didn't look the least bit remorseful.

They were chasing each other around the table faster than you could blink, followed by laughter and whoops of joy.

"I guess that just leaves Rai." Dustin said at last, glancing over his shoulder at the youngest girl in the group. He and Shane shared a look, and in unison declared "Earth."

"Guess some things _are_ inherited." Shane clinked glasses with Dustin, and that was the end of it.

Their children were as much a legacy to the rangers as they were themselves. The fact that their children existed meant they had succeeded, and good had triumphed over evil. This was the world they had fought so hard to protect, the world they'd hoped to be a part of after they laid down their powers.

But some things stayed with you, Shane rationalized. You couldn't defend the planet together and not become a family. They bonds linking all of them to one another were as strong as any family linked by blood, but then Sensei had always told him that blood wasn't what made a family.

"Families are sewn together out of love for one another," Sensei often said. "That love comes in all forms, but it is as strong and true in each of them. Love binds us, and in the end, that is what family is truly about."

The bonds that linked them to their colors were equally as important. The color obsession, as both Leanne and Jade had fondly called it, was more like a badge of honor. He was proud to wear his color, and he understood what Tori meant about it making her feel better. It made him feel better, too. Connected, maybe. Maybe just knowing that the power would protect those whose lives it had touched, in one form or another.

They would always be rangers. Together, and apart. They were linked through the power, to each other, and to something much, much bigger.

Shane would always be proud to have served as the red ranger, and he knew the sentiment was shared by the rest of the team. Their children would grow up proud to be who they were.

The echoes of what they had done as rangers would resound for years to come, in their own lives, and in their children's lives.

And _that_ wasn't such a bad thing after all.


End file.
